“A life on the ocean wave, And a home on the rolling deep.” but now, alas! he was tuneless, and almost breathless; but I imagined that had he been able to sing, the burden of his lay would have been-- “The sea, the sea, the horrid sea.” This individual, from a circumstance which I have before alluded to, had received the appellation of Kedge Anchor, or Cage Anchor, or it was sometimes abbreviated to Cage; and as he will figure repeatedly as I proceed, I may as well at the outset give him the cognomen by which he was known during his stay aboard with us. His sickness, and ludicrous exclamations of “I wish I was on the steam-wagon again” (he had formerly been brakeman on the New York and Erie Railroad), and pathetic entreaties to be allowed to die in peace, when desired to do anything, excited the mirth of all, no sympathy being tendered to him except in one instance, when one of the seamen offered him a pint of salt water, assuring him it was a cordial; a mouthful was sufficient to undeceive him, he spat out the nauseating draught, and the queer expression he wore on his phiz, and no less queer entreaty to take the darned thing away, were so humorous as to shock his auditors into merriment, and secured him against farther molestation. The reason that so many green hands are shipped in vessels engaged in this trade, is, that they are to be engaged for a trifling proportion of the vessel’s earnings, and the great difficulty of procuring those who have before been to sea, to go before the mast a second time; no man whomsoever, if he can make any pretensions to mediocrity, being obliged a second time to go before the mast; he is always qualified for the post of boat-steerer, and can attain it without any trouble; and those who are not disgusted with their first voyage and have a particle of energy or ambition in their composition, invariably do so; and from boatsteerer gradually ascend to be captains. Whaling is, in fact, a progressive service, and although the probation comprises the best part of a man’s life, yet the pinnacle of their fame is an honorable one; and as the boys who are educated in New Bedford are brought up with the idea that to be a whaling skipper is the _ne plus ultra_ of all stations in life, so they consider it as the acme of all their ambitious hopes.